A worthwhile supernatural thriller despite occasional stumbles.
In Creed’s novel, a married Chicago couple vows to figure out what a possibly homicidal ghost wants.
Twenty-five-year-old Joe Miller’s mother, with her dying words, makes him promise to go see her estranged sister. As Aunt Maggie is 500 miles away from Chicago in a small Tennessee town, investigative reporter Joe and his legal-secretary wife, Jill, decide to go there for a much-needed vacation. Soon, the couple learns about the town’s eerie history: Local rumor claims that the ghost of a woman who died three decades ago haunts the mountains along with the spirit of her cat. It seems fanciful, at first, but on the way to Maggie’s, the couple actually sees the ghostly cat; in addition, a living stranger helps the couple with a flat tire and dies horribly shortly thereafter. Was the stranger a victim of the cat owner’s “psychopathic spirit,” who may also have caused a fatal school bus accident years ago? Before long, that ghost attaches herself to Joe, following him wherever he goes; the couple stays in Tennessee to figure out the ghost’s identity as well as her purpose. When it turns out she’s a likely murder victim, Joe and Jill realize that they may be looking for a still-living killer. Creed rolls out some diverting ghost-story tropes, as when the couple seeks out a psychic for help and hears mysterious voices in a dark room. Still, the story offers several surprises along with the mysterious details surrounding the ghost’s death; the psychic has a secret of her own, for example, and bizarre nightmares plague Jill. The main characters are sympathetic and relatable, and they see their share of personal difficulties; for example, a doctor tells Jill, who believes she’s pregnant, that she’s unable to have children. This makes the story feel more rewarding when the characters dig deep to expose a supernatural being’s secrets. Sadly, a number of distracting grammatical errors (“It’s more than just a coincident”; “Marry Had a Little Lamb”) hamper the book’s enjoyability, and the alternation between the past and present tense is particularly distracting.
A worthwhile supernatural thriller despite occasional stumbles.Pub Date: June 19, 2014
ISBN: 9781499039139
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Xlibris US
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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